The year’s best films burrowed into esoteric subcultures with ruthless and funny precision, or whipped up fantastically detailed alternative realities, creating vivid new societies centered on everything from adorable underground critters to men in tights.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Quentin Tarantino finally delivers his second great film, 15 years after “Pulp Fiction,” with the year’s most audacious, thrilling cine-extravaganza. Tarantino’s fiendish eye for mischief, his control of suspense, his mastery of every cinematic tool from musical cues to directing actors and his outlandish sense of humor place him in the ranks of the most talented filmmakers ever to demand, “Action!” .

UP

Has there ever been a finer, funnier, or more surprising, film about old age than Pete Docter’s “Up,” in which a codger restarts his life with a cloud of balloons, a young scout and a batty bird named Kevin?

FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Wes Anderson’s playfulness finds its true home with a cast of dolls in the visually enchanting, delightfully frolicsome adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story, a kid’s classic for grown-ups.

WATCHMEN

Uncompromising, bleak and disturbing, “Watchmen” is a furious triumph of imagination that advances the superhero movie into questions political, historical, philosophical and even religious as the world ticks toward Armageddon.

FUNNY PEOPLE

Judd Apatow’s most serious and committed film candidly illuminates the self-hate, ridiculous rewards and selfcentered carelessness of professional comedians in a story centered on an Adam Sandlerlike comic actor (played by Adam Sandler) dying of a rare disease.

UP IN THE AIR

Racking up frequent flier miles, titanium cards and one-night stands, George Clooney’s professional corporate downsizer begins to reassess a life without baggage when he makes a connection with his female opposite.

AN EDUCATION

Britain at its most aggressively dull virtually transforms from blackand- white to color inthe eyes of a too-smart schoolgirl when, in the early ’60s, she meets a debonair but rakish older man. Carey Mulligan gives the year’s most notable breakthrough performance as the secondary-school student who knows both too much and too little.

IN THE LOOP

A political satire to rank with the classic 1970s Britcom “Yes, Minister,” Armando Iannucci’s “In the Loop” takes place during an extended fl ame war among British and UK politicos scrambling to promote their careers during the runup to a real war.

OF TIME AND THE CITY

An obsessed, haunted yet mordantly witty filmmaker, Terence Davies, illuminates his soot-encrusted hometown of Liverpool in the postwar years with his feverish, intoxicating, transcendent dream-documentary.

SHALL WE KISS?

Virginie Ledoyen — the French Natalie Portman — stars in a classic French sex comedy about the long chain of consequences that result when two friends decide to exchange a single kiss.

LOU LUMENICK’S PICKS:

Blame the economy, corporate instability, global warming or whatever — but this was the most dispiritingly awful year for movies since I started reviewing professionally in 1981. Risk-averse Hollywood is looking forward to its first-ever $10 billion year in domestic grosses, thanks largely to franchises such as “Transformers,” “Harry Potter,” “The Twilight Saga,” “Ice Age,” “X-Men,” “Night at the Museum” and “Star Trek.” The brightest spot in the movie going year was the bumper crop of animation. No fewer than three ’toons made my 10-best list — four if you count “Avatar.”

UP IN THE AIR

Jason Reitman’s very smart dark comedy cuts deeply into the zeitgeist, with George Clooney brilliant as a corporate downsizer who learns some life lessons from Vera Farmiga’s sexy fellow road warrior.

UP

The stunning opening montage alone ensured this Pixar masterpiece a place on my list. Once again offering a script that puts most live-action movies to shame, Pixar scored a box-office and critical triumph with a story centering on an old man.

A SERIOUS MAN

Even better than Joel and Ethan Coen’s Oscar-winning “No Country for Old Men,” this is basically the story of Job — Michael Stuhlbarg as a woeprone physics prof — retold as a black comedy in 1960s Minneapolis.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

No Quentin Tarantino fan, I still dug his gorgeously demented reinvention of World War II France with Jewish Nazi hunters led by Brad Pitt and an explosive climax set in a movie theater.

AVATAR

James Cameron’s first film since “Titanic” is a stunningly rendered, epic ecological fable set on an awe-inspiring distant planet that satisfyingly combines an inter-species love story with a rip-roaring climax.

INVICTUS

Clint Eastwood is perhaps the last person you’d expect to see making a movie about South Africa or rugby, but this old-school inspirational period epic with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon scores.

PRECIOUS

This powerful story of an illiterate, obese teenager, pregnant for the second time by her own father, who finds hope in 1987 Harlem is not easy viewing, but it’s not easily forgotten, either.

FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Wes Anderson’s curatorial directorial style finds an ideal outlet in this charming and beautiful animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book, with George Clooney perfect in the leading voice role.

IN THE LOOP

Armando Iannucci’s spinoff of a British sitcom is arguably the year’s funniest movie, with Scottish actor Peter Capaldi delivering a non-stop stream of hilarious profanity as a government spin doctor.

PONYO

Hardly anybody saw this enchanting, eco-friendly reworking of “The Little Mermaid” by Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, but every single frame is a work of art.